Today is the feast of Saint Agnes of Rome, who was killed during the Diocletian persecutions of the early fourth century. She was one of the first Christian virgin martyrs to gain a substantial cult outside of Rome, and it is possible that she might have more of a claim to historicity than some of her fellow virgin martyrs like Catherine of Alexandria, Lucy, Agatha, or Barbara. Her cult spread throughout Latin Christendom, and she was - and remains - typically associated with the lamb which is her main iconographical attribute.
The main centre of her cult is the Church of Saint Agnes Outside the Walls, located in Rome. Its position outside the old city walls point to its origin as a Christian place of worship from before the legalisation of Christianity during the early reign of Constantine, although the church building itself is younger. At this church is found one of the surviving catacombs from the early Christian period, and it is a marvellous place for coming close to the everyday realities of Christian worship in this part of history.
The church itself has undergone several changes in the course of the centuries, and like most churches in Rome it is a blend of different historical periods and styles. I was there for the first and so far only time in the early summer of 2023, when a friend and I co-presented at a conference. We had set aside one day for sightseeing and being both medievalists we went to Sant'Agnese Fuori le Muri to see one of the oldest of the surviving Roman churches. Unfortunately, our visit coincided with the funeral of a dignitary from Thailand, so there was limited opportunity for photography. However, we did get to see the old basilica, the catacombs, and one archaeological jewel that I came to appreciate greatly. The jewel in question is an old stone fragment, ostensibly part of a grave slab or a stone covering. Although it is broken, the words 'S[aint]' and 'Agnes' are still legible, and provide a quiet testimony of the craft and skill that has gone into furnishing the cult of Saint Agnes with various paraphernalia. The stone, although unassuming, is an important testament to the material dimension of the cult of saints, and it has been displayed in front of a marvellous apsis fresco which shows the cross of Christ standing atop a summit from whence the four rivers of Paradise burst forth. This combination of iconography also reminds us that like the Church of Saint Agnes itself, Christianity is a mish-mash of different ideas, different images, different impulses that more or less cohere into some sort of unity - which is what makes studying its history all the more interesting.
To study history requires the study of how history is being used in our own time. The basic principles of either the use of history or its reception - two similar yet distinct concepts - are largely the same independent of the period that is being used or received. However, distinct periods - as defined by later generations of scholars - require distinct parameters for researching and understanding how a given period has been represented, misrepresented, used, abused, received, or been conceptualised in later eras. For me, as a medievalist, I am naturally most interested in the reception of the Middle Ages, namely in medievalism. Within medieval studies, medievalism has emerged as a broad and rich subfield, and the last ten years have especially produced a number of important and interesting studies.
As with all scholarly terms, its definitions are constantly under calibration, and it is necessary that we continue to discuss how to define or delinate the terms we use. The term 'medievalism' itself has been interpreted in different ways, and various sub-subfields have emerged along types of sources, along different postmedieval periods, and different applications. Some particularly valuable resources are the essay collections Medievalisms in a postcolonial world, edited by Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul (2010), and Medievalism: Key Critical terms, edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz (2014), and the series 'Studies in Medievalism', currently in its 34th issue.
My first published foray into medievalism was an article on the concept of 'urban medievalism'. Part of my argument is that we can talk about primary and secondary forms of medievalism, and perhaps also tertiary forms and so on. The difference is that primary medievalism is intentional, and those who use the past are aware that they use a medieval past instead of confusing it with, say, the seventeenth century. Secondary medievalism is incidental and unintentional. It is still the medieval past that is being used or received, but those who do so might not be aware of it. In these cases, the link to the medieval past usually comes through the use of the primary medievalism rather than the Middle Ages. Defining the border between primary and secondary medievalism might not always be straightforward, and discussions might have to be done on a case-by-case basis. In the present blogpost, I want to highlight how tricky it can be to spot secondary medievalisms because sometimes there is nothing medieval about it.
Text: Mauro Boselli; art: Giovanni Ticci; translation: Tone Dannevig
My case study is the 600th issue of the Italian Western comic Tex, which was published in October 2010. Tex was created by Gianluigi Bonelli and Aurelio Galeppini in 1948, and is currently one of Italy's most popular comics, or 'fumetti', with one monthly issue and various specials and spin-offs. The series features the eponymous Tex Willer, a Texas ranger and a Navaho chieftain, his son Kit, the ranger Kit Carson (inspired by but not identical with the historical figure), and Tiger Jack, a Navaho. Most of the stories run across two issues, and they are written in different genres, ranging from classic Westerns to the odd science fiction story. The comic is also big in Norway, and I have been collecting the monthly issues since 1998. The Norwegian publication schedule is a bit behind the Italian one, meaning that what was meant to be a special story marking the important milestone of 600 issues, was published as issue 548 in my home country.
From here on, there will be spoilers.
The story, 'I demoni del Nord', The Demons from the North, is written by Mauro Boselli and veteran artist Giovanni Ticci. The plot concerns a mysterious cannibalistic attack on a fort in the Northwest Territories in Canada, which turns out to be part of a series of raids targeting various First Nation villages. The perpetrators are the so-called demons of the mist, a tribe described as having retained cannibalistic practices from the Siberian tundra, who dwell in mist-covered mountains and have cannibalistic rites in a cave in a dormant volcano. Since it is a single-issue story, the plot is fast-paced and little time is spent on describing the tribe itself, but some attention has been made to mark the distinction between some of the First Nations that appear in the story, especially the Cree and the Dogrib peoples.
What, then, does this have to do with the Middle Ages and its reception? The story operates outside the medieval timeframe, and arguably outside of the medieval geographical remit. It is an action story featuring rifles, dynamite, Mounties, and Canadian First Nations, and the desperate defence scenes are more reminiscent of Western films such as The Magnificent Seven. There is nothing medieval to be found.
Except that the story is an adaptation of The Eaters of the Dead, the 1976 novel by Michael Crichton, which was adapted into the film The Thirteenth Warrior in 1999. Crichton's novel draws on both Ibn Fadlan's travelogue from his mission to the Volga Bulgars in 921, and on the poem Beowulf. The plot concerns thirteen warriors who fight to protect a Norwegian village against attackers that turn out to be relics Neanderthals living in caves in the mountains. The novel is a clear-cut case of medievalism, seeing as it uses several elements from the Middle Ages - a tenth-century Arabic travelogue and a poem in Old English at least two centuries older - but also incorporating distinctly modern elements such as the idea of relict Neanderthals that reveal that this is medievalism and not medieval cultural product.
I demoni del Nord is an adaptation of Crichton's novel, and although it is evident that the novel is set in a twentieth-century idea of the Middle Ages, the comic book writer, Mauro Boselli, has sought to adapt it to a Western setting in which the basic plot points are embedded within a different narrative universe. Such adaptations are common in both literature and cinema, and they showcase why genres are defined not just by periods or countries but by narratological features. I demoni del Nord is a Western based on a suspense story set in the Middle Ages, but a story that might also be said to contain features from twentieth-century cinema, where the Western has been one of the defining genres. Mauro Boselli's adaptation of the novel makes the comic book story into a case of secondary medievalism because it is incidental. The medieval setting of The Eaters of the Dead is of no consequence for the comic book, because the story could have been adapted in the same way had the novel been set on Mars or sometime in the deep future. And even though the medieval features of the original novel are completely removed, the story itself is recognisable, and it is possible to see that we are dealing with a work of art set in nineteenth-century Canada based on a work of art set in tenth-century Norway. Consequently, in order to use Crichton's novel to understand how the Middle Ages have been used and received in our own times, we also need to follow the trace onwards to both the film adaptation from 1999 and the comic book adaptation from 2010. Researching history means to understand how historical periods have been used and received in later centuries, and to fully understand this use and this reception, we also need to follow whatever echoes and reverberations that the primary medievalism creates further down the line.
The
sixteenth century is one of the most dynamic periods in the history of European
cartography. Not only did the voyages of the era provide new knowledge that was
transmitted through maps, but experimentation with projections and ways of
transmitting knowledge about the world led to a wide variety of maps. However,
in some cases the cartographers got things wrong. In some cases – as I hope to
blog about at a later point – it was because the sources were faulty, and this is
the explanation for why we find a lot of non-existent islands of some of the most
cutting edge maps of the period. In other cases, knowledge got warped in
transmission. It is one such case I want to write about here.
Knowledge could be warped in a multitude of ways
along the chain of transmission. In some cases, the knowledge could be faulty
from the start, whereas in other cases something might get lost in translation,
seeing as knowledge often passed through several different languages on its way
from observation to the map itself. In the present case, the main reason appears
to be a mixture of unfamiliarity with the territory in question, combined with unfamiliarity
with the language(s) of that region.
Courtesy of the University of Tromsø's map collection
In 1561, Girolamo
Ruscelli, a cartographer based in Venice, printed two maps of the North
Atlantic theatre – one detailed, one rather stylised. The detailed map is known
as Septentrionalium partium nova tabula, a new map of the northern parts.
This map contains a lot of placenames, including settlements, rivers and islands.
These names are often imprecise, suggesting how difficult it could be for those
from – for example – the Netherlands or Italy to accurately render the Icelandic,
Danish or Norwegian pronunciations. In the case of Iceland, this difficulty is
in part suggested by the choice of using Latinised names of the island’s two
dioceses, Skálholt and Hólar, rendered as Scalodin and Olensis. While the
accuracy of these names can be discussed, the names themselves are correct
insofar as the identification of the diocesan sees is concerned.
What is more puzzling, however, is to consider
the correct identification of the detailed map with some elements of the more
stylised map, the so-called Schonladia Nuova, new Schonladia, issued in
the same year. There are several interesting differences in the presentation of
Iceland and Greenland in these two maps. The detailed map contains both names,
respectively Islanda and Engronelant, the latter suggesting that information
was transmitted through Dutch interlocutors. The stylised map, however, does
not provide a name for Greenland – and indeed seems to suggest that Greenland
is linked with the Kola peninsula – whereas Iceland is identified as Thyle, an
alternative spelling of Thule. That Iceland is given the name Thule is not
surprising, as these two names were used interchangeably about the island
throughout the Middle Ages. Another interesting difference, however, is that
the stylised map includes a stretch of frozen sea, the ‘mare congelatum’, which
forms a belt of ice along the coast of Greenland.
Courtesy of the University of Tromsø's map collection
The most
surprising difference between the two maps, however, is that the stylised map
contains a strange duplication of names – a duplication of sorts. In this map,
there are two place names on Iceland, namely the two dioceses. However, the names
are not the same as those found in Septentrionalium partium nova tabula.
Instead, the dioceses are called Skalholten and Holen. These are Danified names,
and suggest that the information has been transmitted through Danish informants
in Venice. A direct Danish contact would not be all that surprising,
considering that several Scandinavian ecclesiastics were in exile following the
Protestant reformations in Denmark-Norway and Sweden. Given the accuracy of
these names, it is therefore curious to see that the Latinised and less
accurate names found on the detailed map are still included in Schonladia Nuova,
but not where we would expect them to be. Rather, the two Latinised names have been
moved to Greenland, where they are rendered as Scalholdin and Holenses, the
placements of which do not correspond to any placename in Greenland in Septentrionalium
partium nova tabula. We seem to be dealing with some kind of
overcorrection, where an attempt to include the vernacular names of Iceland’s two
dioceses in the new map has replicated the error elsewhere. This is, of course,
presuming that Schonladia Nuova was produced after the other map, which
seems likely given the confusion in question.
The case of the duplicated Icelandic names is a
good example of how certain parts of the sixteenth-century world were, in
effect, the edge of knowledge. Along this edge, some certainties existed – such
as the fact that Greenland and Iceland were real places – and so did many
uncertainties, such as how to accurately and correctly render the names of
these places. The confusion in Schonladia Nuova is not only due to the
fact that Venice is a long way away from Iceland and Greenland. It is also indicative
of how Greenland was falling off the European edge of knowledge in this period.
Throughout the fifteenth century the contact between the Norse settlements in
Greenland and the rest of Europe dwindled and eventually stopped. Bishops
continued to be appointed to Greenland’s diocesan see, Garðar, but these were
bishops in name only and never set foot on the island itself. Greenland was
still known, if mainly as a memory or as a landmass occasionally seen by voyagers
who traversed the Greenland Sea. Consequently, instead of knowledge there was a
lot of information about Greenland, and most of it appears to have been
incorrect, as seen in the confusion regarding Scalholdin and Holensis. In this
way, knowledge warped into information, and information was tainted by hearsay,
legend, and fiction, but became common misconceptions through the medium of
maps.
During a stay in Rome for a conference last week, a friend and I spent one day as tourists, seeking out churches of particular interest to two medievalists interested in the cult of saints. It was a rich day, full of wonderful sights and glorious reminders of the medieval past of a city currently so dominated by Baroque ecclesiastical architecture.
While I hope to return to some of the sights of that day in future blogposts, I will here just briefly present one of the spectacular works of art to be found in some of these churches, namely the flayed Saint Bartholomew in the Church of the Four Crowned Saints. Bartholomew appears in a gory fashion quite typical of representations of him in art, carrying his flayed skin over his shoulder like a piece of cloth, with the instrument of his martyrdom, the knife, in his hand. I have not yet been able to ascertain the date of this fresco cycle.
Bartholomew is one among several saints in the fresco cycle on northern wall of the church nave, but arguably the most arresting of them all. The image is a stark reminder of how visual communication in medieval churches could be very visceral, and presumably all the more effective. The legend of Saint Bartholomew, and especially the manner of his death, was especially suited to this kind of visceral communication.
The frescoes in Quattro Coronati are beautiful pieces of art, however disturbing, and also serve to remind us that beauty can often serve to fashion grim tools for what is ultimately a beautiful message - at least if you are a Christian believing in the saints - which is the steadfastness of the faithful.
This evening I finished reading the novel Dvärgen (The Dwarf) by the Swedish novelist Pär Lagerkvist. The novel is narrated by the dwarf of a late-medieval Italian prince, who is an extreme misanthrope and observes the world through a filter of hatred and incomprehension, interpreting the actions and natures of those around him from his vantage point of the outsider who is often mocked and ignored, yet who thereby manages to come closer to the realities of courtly life. It is a wonderful novel, but in an extremely discomforting way. Since the protagonist considers himself in opposition to the doings of humans - whom he considers a different species of beings altogether - he also breaks norms, performs impieties, and presents the twisted, childish view of the world of a supreme egotist who feels insufficiently powerful and who is dissatisfied with everything - everything but violence, that is. This contradictory nature of the protagonist runs like a jarringly discordant note through the entire novel, a note made all the more discordant because his hatred is of such a petulant nature. It has taken me significantly longer to finish this novel than I expected, and it is precisely because of this disharmony.
As I began reading the novel, I was struck by the idea that a fitting soundtrack to my reading would be something by Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), one of the most notorious composers of Renaissance music, known for his heavy use of dissonance which is in notable contrast to earlier Italian composers. It is not quite clear to me why his music came to mind, as I have not listened to it since the months following a conference in Italy back in 2013, which coincided with the anniversary of his death. Perhaps it was the late-medieval/Renaissance setting of Lagerkvist's novel that prompted the connection. Perhaps it was that like the novel's protagonist, Gesualdo also broke the norms of his day and also committed murder (I misremembered and thought he had murdered his father - I realised later that he had murdered his wife and her lover). Whatever the reason, I found that the homicidal composer's disharmonious music suited the murderous disharmony of the novel's narrator disconcertingly well, as if the two horrible human beings - one real, one fictional - echoed each other and brought something more living into the art. It was an uncomfortable exercise at times, but one that was rewarding in strange ways, as the disharmony of it all allowed me to immerse myself somewhat more deeply into the twisted reality of the novel's nameless misfit of a protagonist. And it served also as a reminder that - as shown by both the novel and the music - the idea of the Renaissance as a time of glory is a gross misconception that only survives because it fits certain grand narratives, and because we give too much credence to the art it left behind and not the circumstances in which that art was made, or by whom or to whose cost that art came into being. Although fictional, Lagerkvist's misanthropic narrator helps us remember that.
Today, February 22, is the feast of Saint Peter's Chair. This feast commemorates the founding of the bishopric of Antioch. According to early tradition, and based on the historical meeting of Peter and Paul in Antioch as recorded in Galatians 2:11-14, Peter established Antioch as a centre of preaching and served as its leader for a number of years. The name bishopric is a later projection onto the incipient infrastructure, and also conveys a succession and connection to later bishops of Antioch that is historically doubtful. This feast of Saint Peter's Chair is one of two such feasts from the medieval tradition. On January 18 another feast was celebrated, this time commemorating Peter's supposed founding of the see of Rome. This feast is now no longer included in modern Catholic calendars.
The idea of Peter as a founding bishop was, and remains, the linchpin of the institutional identity of the papal see. The pope is seen as the apostolic successor of Saint Peter, and the supporters of this view points to Matthew 16:18, where Christ says to Peter that he is the rock (petra - rock in Greek) upon which Christ's church was to be built. This verse is inscribed on the inside of the base of the main cupola in Saint Peter's basilica in Rome, for instance.
The notion that Rome is the centre of institutional Christianity came about in the Early Middle Ages. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) was one of the most vocal promoters of the primacy of Rome, but for the first seven centuries of Christian history Rome was just one bishopric among many, and a bishopric that was entangled in various local conflicts on the Italian peninsula. Granted, Rome had a symbolic importance, as it was accepted that both Peter and Paul were executed and buried there, but in terms of power, it was not until the alliance between the Carolingian dynasty and the papal see that things began to slowly turn in a different direction. Even so, it would take centuries before the Roman pontiff became a powerful figure on the political scene beyond Italy.
Papal power in the Middle Ages rested in large part on the symbolism of the city and of its connection to Peter. Consequently, Peter became an important figure in the establishment of a papal institutional identity. There are numerous pieces of evidence to showcase how reliant papal identity was, and remains, on the figure of Saint Peter. Churches, liturgical feasts, iconography, history-writing, all contribute to establish, formulate and perpetuate the idea that Peter was the first pope. Among other things, this can be seen in the plethora of medieval illuminations in which Peter is presented in papal regalia, holding one or two keys - the keys to Heaven and Earth which comprise the papal coat of arms - and often sitting on a cathedra, the bishop's seat. In this blogpost, I have collected a few examples from the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that point to the papal iconography with which these images of Saint Peter are imbued. Three of these four pictures are made in France, and this points to the universality of the idea of Peter as pope in medieval Latin Christendom.
The most recent example I have chosen to include is not made in France, but it ended up in France by historical necessity, as it were. The example in question is a missal containing the Use of Rome, i.e. the list of feasts and their classification that was based on the liturgical performance in the bishopric of Rome. This missal is a sumptuous book produced in Bologna around 1370, a point in time when the leader of the see of Rome was not in Rome but in Avignon in Southern France. While we do not know exactly when the missal was made, it is believed that it was made for Pope Urban V, who returned to Rome in 1367 (but stayed only for a brief period). As Urban died in 1370, the missal passed on to his successors, and it remained in the papal residence at Avignon, even with the return of the pope to Rome in 1376. Consequently, when a series of popes elected by the French cardinals but not acknowledged by the Italian cardinals, these popes - antipopes or Avignon popes - returned to Avignon. The first of these Avignon popes was Robert of Geneva, who took the name Clement (VII), who reigned from 1378 to 1394. Thus, he became the new owner of the missal.
The Bolognese makers of the missal, however, could in no way anticipate how things would turn out. They made the missal for a pope who might at that time have returned to Rome, or might still be in Avignon. But regardless of the pope's geographical location, the pope remained the bishop of Rome, and consequently the missal had to follow the Roman liturgy, and contemporary Roman iconography. This is seen in the various episcopal figures among the saints illuminated in the initials, and among these we find Peter, rendered in the sumptuous garbs of the fourteenth-century Roman pontiff, holding the two keys and wearing the tiara of the papal authority. Despite the ongoing controversy over the fact that the bishop of Rome had resided outside of Rome for decades, the papal identity remained rooted in the idea that Peter was the first of the popes and that the popes were his apostolic successors. The feast of Saint Peter's Chair is one of the feasts that commemorate this papal identity, even though this particular feast was originally celebrated in commemoration of his establishment of the See of Antioch.
Today is the feast of Saint Olaf of Norway, a day which in Norway is known as Olsok, coming for Old Norse "Olavsvaka", meaning the wake or vigil of Saint Olaf. To mark the day, I give you one of the more curious manifestations of the importance of Saint Olaf to the Norwegian imagination and the Norwegian identity, namely the painting of the altar of Saint Olaf in Rome.
This altar is found in the church San Carlo al Corso, dedicated to Saint Carlo Borromeo (d.1584). It was dedicated April 9, 1893, and the altar painting was carried out by the Polish painter Pius Welonski (d.1931). The altar itself was established on the initiative of Norwegian Catholics and was intended to mark that it was fifty years since Pope Leo XIII had been ordained as a bishop (although he would only become pope in 1878).
Olav, King of Norway Painting in the church of San Carlo al Corso, by Pius Welonski Courtesy of this website
The painting depicts Olaf with his axe and his royal orb, standing on a defeated dragon in a very Norwegian landscape. As such it fits in a tradition in the depictions of Olaf from the late fourteenth-century onwards, in which Olaf is positioned on top of a beast, often interpreted as a dragon. It is clear that Welonski had some very good directions for how Olaf should be depicted according to how late-ninteenth-century Norwegian Catholics expected to see him.
From the lower half of the left-hand side of the frame and to the lower half of the right-hand side of the frame, one can read the legend "S. Olavus Martyr Norvegiae Rex et Patronus", Saint Olaf Martyr, king and patron of Norway. This is perfectly in keeping with how Olaf was understood in the contemporary mindset. However, when seen from the angle of the medieval Olaf iconography and its development, it is noteworthy that the image fuses two separate stages in this development. On the one hand we see Olaf as patron and king of Norway, a presentation and interpretation of Olaf which appeared in the mid-twelfth century under the auspices of Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson (reigned 1161-88). On the other hand, we see Olaf situated on top of a beast, which is a tradition that only emerged later in the Middle Ages, and possibly outside Norway, meaning that it might have its conception in stories of popular origin or stories which were generated outside the control of the Norwegian medieval church. This fusion of Olaf the patron and Olaf the dragon-stander had by the nineteenth-century become perfectly canonical to the Norwegian mind, and this is the version presented to the Catholics of the world who enter the San Carlo church. But this fusion hides a complex and long-winded evolution which has merged elements originating in very different milieus and at very different times, and made it the modern idea of the medieval Olaf.
Bibliography
Kari-Anne Bye, Å drepe dragen, MA thesis, NTNU, Trondheim, 2011
When researching the cult and literature of saints, one is very often dealing with figures whose historicity is doubtful, and sometimes even figures that clearly have not existed. In some cases, the non-existent figures were not the saints themselves, but instead people featuring in the stories about them. These secondary figures of historical non-existence very often contribute to obscuring that kernel of the saint's legend which does seem to have some historical basis. This is the case with Saint Richard and King Otto of England.
In my research I recently came across the story of Saint Richard in an incunabula housed at the university library of the University of Southern Denmark (Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek). According to the front matter of the book, replicated by hand after the original printed front matter was somehow lost, the book is a collection of saints' lives in German called Dat Leuend der Hÿlghen, or The Lives of the Saints, printed in Lübeck in 1492.
Saint Richard, son of King Otto of England
Dat leuend der hÿlghen, a collection of stories about saints, Lübeck, 1492
Incunabula RARA M 15, Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek
I was quite intrigued to see this story of Saint Richard. I had never heard of him, and since I have been working quite a bit with English saints I was excited to learn of one more. As the vignette to the story indicates, Richard was noted as a pilgrim, shown by the pilgrim's hat and the pilgrim's badges of the scallop, which is the symbol of Santiago in Compostela, but which is also seems to be used as a shorthand for denoting the pilgrim in medieval iconography. I was, however, very surprised to read that he was the son of King Otto of England, because there has never been any such king in the history of the kings of England.
As for the historical nature of Saint Richard, this is, according to David Farmer, a name that is given to the father of Saint Willibald, Saint Winnibald, and Saint Walburga, three figures whose historicity is certain, and who were Anglo-Saxons pilgrims who became important ecclesiastical figures in Germany. The story of their pilgrimage were written down by the nun Huneberc of Heidenheim (fl.780) in the book Hodoeporican, and Reginald of Eichstatt (d.991) appears to be the one responsible for introducing Richard as their father. According to the legend, Richard died at Lucca where his relics were venerated "at least from the twelfth century" (Farmer 2004: 454).
Accordingly, Saint Richard is a figure of dubious historicity, woven around the possible fate of the historical father of the three Anglo-Saxons who became saints in their turn. It seems clear, however, that Richard was not at any point a king. What then, of the mystical King Otto of England?
It is possible that Otto is here the result of an intended German translation of Offa. This is a name of two historical kings, the eldest being a king of the East Saxons who was active around 709, the youngest being the more famous king Offa of Mercia (d.796). Chronologically speaking, if Otto is indeed Offa, it is likely to be Offa of the East Saxons. But even if this is the intended identity of Richard's father, it is safe to say that Richard himself does not appear to have ever been the son of Offa, and that this is rather a product of later legends accrued around the cult of Saint Richard who was venerated not only in Lucca but also in Eichstatt where Reginald wrote his legend.
Bibliography
Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2004
Today is the feast of Santa Agnese di Montepulciano (1268-1317). She renounced a worldly life and left a wealthy family to give herself to the service of Christ, and became a Dominican nun. (This is symbolized by the two dogs carrying torches in the portrait below, an image taken from a dream ascribed to the mother of Dominic de Guzman when pregnant with him.) She became very popular in Montepulciano and further off, and Catherine of Siena became one of her followers. For the general details of Agnese's life, I refer you to this older blogpost.
In this blogpost I wish to present you with a miracle from her vita, the hagiographical account of her life which was written by Raymond of Capua (c.1330-1399). Raymond served as rector of the monastery of Dominican nuns in Montepulciano from 1363 to 1367, and he also became the confessor of Catherine of Siena. He undertook to write a biography of Agnese, possibly inspired by his contact with nuns at Montepulciano who had themselves had contact with her around fifty years ago. Raymond might also have been impressed by the devotion to Agnese evident in the city where she was referred to as Santa Agnese. From his biography of her, we also see that he probably did think that she was indeed a vessel for God's miraculous power. At this time she had not been recognized by the papal authorities as a genuine saint, and Raymond's hagiography seeks to support her case for canonization. This was part of a recent trend within the Dominican order, that they promoted the cults of religious women from their ranks. This trend partly grew out of a genuine belief in the sanctity of these women, but it was also a way for the Dominican order to increase their own prestige.
I hope to return to Raymond of Capua's book on Agnese in later blogposts, but for now I will be content with present a miracle from the third part of Raymond's book. This part is concerned with the miracles wrought after Agnese's death, and the miracle in question comprises the sixth chapter
Agnes of Montepulciano with Dominican dogs, portrait on ceramic Anonymous artist connected with the circle of Hernando de Valladares, Second third of the 17th century, Museo de Bellas Artes, Sevilla (Courtesy of Wikimedia)
Another miracle I found often repeated in the book [possibly a compilation of miracles held at Montepulciano] , whose excellent and widespread fame I am driven and constrained to relate unto the glorification of Agnes. In the territory of Perugia there is a hamlet called by its rustic inhabitants Cigliano, in which a few months after Agnes' death, a huge fire, caused by vicious carelessness, was raging out of control. Fear seized the inhabitants because their dwellings were not made of stone but rather of strong wooden beams covered with dried rushes which could only serve as fuel for the flames. Therefore, when they saw that no natural means would save them, since a strong wind was blowing in the direction of the village, the villagers, who had learned by hearsay of the wonderful works of Agnes, ran to divine aid. They made a vow to the holy virgin that, if she delivered their cottages from being burned in the fire, they would personally visit her precious relics. What a wondrous deed, unseen in our days! As the ones making the vow afterward recounted in Montepulciano before the governors of the territory, many notaries and witnesses, under pain of oath, immediately upon utterance of the vow, the fire, robbed of its power, grew cold. It did not touch any cottage, except one which was consumed before the vow. Even more, the ones it had begun to touch it miraculously withdrew from, so that not a trace of the fire could be seen afterward. Whence the narrators of this miracle put forward this testimony with an oath, that, when the fire was raging in one cottage, it was so completely extinguished by the power of Agnes that it was as if a river of water had been poured on it. For this reason, the inhabitants, giving immense thanks to the almighty Lord and to his holy virgin, with one accord fulfilled their vow and boldly and openly proclaimed the stupendous prodigy of Agnes to everyone. - Raymond of Capua, The Life of Saint Agnes of Montepulciano, translated by Sister Mary Martin Jacobs OP, DNS publications, 2012: 110-12
There are several things to comment on in this brief section, but I will limit myself to two items. First of all, it is interesting to note Raymond's claim that the extinguishing of fire is a miracle "unseen in our days!". The belief that saints could plead for God to aid against wildfire is an old one, and it is attributed to several saints throughout the Middle Ages. The claim that this miracle is "unseen in our days" need not imply novelty, but it does seem to suggest a certain uniqueness, at least within a historical period, which then gives an impression of Agnes having special favour in God's eyes. Miraculous rescue from fire is an old topos, and the claim that a miracle is unique in a certain contemporaneity is likewise a topos of hagiography.
The remaining element I want to comment on pertains to the translation. Unfortunately I do not have Raymond's original Latin text at hand, but there is one word which is of significant importance. This word is Sister Mary's translation "power" when talking about Agnes. The Latin original almost certainly uses "virtus" which can be translated as "power" and is often not translated as such into English, even in cases where the context suggests that to be the right translation. Here, however, I'm tempted to speculate whether "virtus" should rather be rendered as "virtue". This is because to say that the fire was extingusihed "by the power of Agnes" suggests that the agent of the miracle was Agnes herself, while in the theology of miracles the saints are not agents but vessels for the miraculous power of God. I hesitate to criticize the translation without having seen the original, but I do want to emphasize to readers that either "by" or "power" could also be understood differently.
Bibliography
Raymond of Capua, The Life of Saint Agnes of Montepulciano, translated by Sister Mary Martin Jacobs OP, DNS publications, 2012
Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the later Middle Ages, translated by Jean Birrell, Cambridge University Press, 2005
In a previous blogpost I had a closer look at some adaptations of William Shakespeare in Italian comic book stories from the Disney universe. Since the beginning of the Italian production of comics about Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse in the 1950s, a wide range of works from world literature have been adapted into stories from the world of Duckburg, in Italian Paperopoli. A range of these adaptations have been collected in a book series issued by Corriere della Sera which is called I classici della letteratura, the classics of literature, presenting these adaptations with information both about the stories themselves and their authors. I am very fond of these adaptations since I grew up with them in Norwegian translations, and they will feature in many blogposts to come. This time I will look briefly at one very charming aspect of an adaptation of Torquato Tasso's (1544-95) epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata, the deliverance of Jerusalem, which was completed in 1575.
Front page of vol.14 in the second edition of I Classici della Letteratura
In 1565 Torquato Tasso settled in Ferrara and became attached to the house of d'Este, and during his time there he wrote a number of plays and poems in addition to his magnum opus. Gerusalemme Liberata is an epic chivalric poem, and in composition Tasso borrowed from that blend of classical epic and chivalric romance which had been made famous by Ludovico Ariosto in the early part of the century. The narrative of the poem is set during the First Crusade and recounts the capture of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre led by Godfrey de Bouillon in 1099, but also heavily interspersed with digressions, love stories and fantastical episodes.
Gerusalemme Liberata has had a great impact on Western culture. For instance, Edmund Spenser was very much inspired by Tasso's poem in the writing his own epic, The Faerie Queene, which he began composing in 1590. Also John Milton relied on Tasso's imagery for parts of Paradise Lost, and a wide range of operas, songs and paintings have sought to elaborate or focus on elements from Tasso's epic, and in the twentieth century the poem was adapted into a Disney comic.
Opening page of Paperopoli Liberata
The comic book adaptation, Paperopoli Liberata or Duckburg Delivered, was written by Guido Martina and drawn by Giovan Battista Carpi. It was first published in the Italian Topolino magazine (Mickey Mouse) in vols. 598 and 599, respectively issued on 14th and 21st of May, 1967. The epic, medievalesque tone of the adaptation is set already on the opening page where we see a painting of Donald and Scrooge fighting Beagle Boys in stereotypical Saracen armour (note the pointed helmets) and armed with revolvers and machine guns, highlighting the blend of old and new, and perhaps preparing the reader for the fact that the adaptation is set in modern-time Duckburg.
The first lines of the comic book story are adaptations from the opening of Gerusalemme Liberata. In the new rendition the text begins like this (translations from Italian are my own):
Canto l'armi Furiose e il capitano / Chamato Paperino
"I sing of furious arms and the captain / who is called Donald Duck"
While Tasso's poem opens in this way:
Canto l'arme pietose e 'l capitano che 'l gran sepolcro liberò di Cristo
"I sing of pious arms and the captain who liberated the great Sepulchre of Christ"
Guido Martina has retained the tone of the epic and necessarily secularised the content, but although the Paperino story is set in a fictional part of America rather than in late-eleventh-century Jerusalem, some elements are still retained and employed in a game of intertextuality. One example of this can be seen below, as a sign tells us that this is the camp of Donald Duck and his nephew, bringing to mind - as is pointed out in the introduction to this volume - the camp of the crusaders in Tasso's epic.
(Note, for instance, that Martina applies "Furiose" with a capital f instead of Tasso's "pietose". This is of course to remove the religious dimension of the poem, but it might also be a nod to Tasso's debt to Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and perhaps also to Martina's own possible debt to Luciano Bottaro who had composed his adaptation of Ariosto's poem, Paperin Furioso, the year before.)
The story begins with the breaking of the camp and the departure for Paperopoli, and this sequence contains one of the most charming tools of intertextuality I can think of. As the nephews are taking down the tent, they notice that their new friend, a little badger, is saddened by their imminent leaving. The nephews then suggest that he come with them back to Paperopoli, and this makes the badger happy. But how is this intertextuality? Well, simply because this badger is a representation of Torquato Tasso himself, as his surname means "badger" in Italian. This is made crystal clear on the following page, where the little badger turns to the reader and says:
"It is not that I lack speech, it is that I, Torquato the badger, speak in the language of the badgers!"
Torquato the badger is then put in the car and as he departs he looks forward to whatever will transpire next, saying "what a wonderful adventure! I will tell this to my children, and to my children's children". Torquato Tasso is thus in a way reincarnated as Torquato the badger, and he will become the badger-poet who renders in proper verse the story which is about to unfold in Paperopoli.
The Ducks behold Paperopoli, as the crusaders beheld Jerusalem
At the Centre for Medieval Literature in Odense
where I work, we have recently started up a Latin reading group in which we
translate selected stories from Legenda
Aurea together. Since we are a centre of literary scholars – in various
ways – we always talk about the stories as stories and narrative in addition to
what grammatical discussions might arise. This has proved to be a very nice
forum for talking about various forms of narrative, partly because we have a
wide range of expertise among us and partly because the stories themselves –
abbreviated renditions of existing tradition – lend themselves very well to
narrative analysis. In this series of blogposts, therefore, I aim to present
parts of our discussions and talk about points to be made from the stories. I
will attempt to talk about elements and points that I raised in the course of
our talk, but when I rely on the ideas of others I will do my best to attribute
them as precisely as possible.
Abdon and Sennen holding their palms of martyrdom Avignon - BM - ms. 0136, f.257v, Roman missal, c.1370 Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr
First up is the story of SS Abdon and Sennen,
and since their legend is so very short I will here quote it in full length as
translated by William Granger Ryan in the 2012 edition of The Golden Legend (Princeton University Press).
Abdon and Sennen suffered martyrdom under the emperor Decius. When Decius had
conquered Babylonia and other provinces, he found some Christians in these
regions, brought them back to the town of Cordoba, and put them to death with
various tortures. Two officials of that area, whose names were Abdon and
Sennen, took the martyrs’ bodies and buried them. When the two were denounced
and brought before Decius, he had them bound with chains and brought to Rome
with him. There in the presence of the emperor and the Senate, they were
ordered either to sacrifice and receive their freedom and goods, or to be
devoured by wild beasts. They scoffed at the idea of sacrificing and spat upon
the idols, so they were dragged to the circus, and two lions and four bears
were loosed upon them. The beasts, however, would not touch the saints but
rather stood guard around them, so they were put to death by the sword. Then
their feet were tied together and their bodies dragged into a temple and thrown
in front of an idol representing the sun god. When the bodies had lain there
for three days, a subdeacon named Quirinus took them away and buried them in
his house. They suffered about A.D. 253.
Later, in the reign of Constantine, the martyrs themselves revealed the
whereabouts of their bodies, and Christians transferred them to the cemetery of
Pontianus, where the Lord granted many benefits to the people through them.
- Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea,
translated by William Granger Ryan, 2012: 412
Abdon and Sennen bury the remains of Christians martyrs Guillaume Courtois, 1656-57 Courtesy of Wikimedia
As can be seen, this is a very compact story and
it contains a lot of information and also a wide number of hagiographical topoi.
To what extent this story has some truth to its foundation is difficult to
assess. This difficulty arises not only from the fact that we lack sources
contemporary to the two martyrs, but also because the narrative contains
several details which are grounded in historical facts. For instance, Decius
was known for his persecutions of Christians, and he did live around the date
given, and although he died in 251 and could not have done anything against any
Christians in 253, the text saves itself from historical inaccuracy by adding
the “about”. Furthermore, that people were taken from Babylonia (which was not
the name of the region at the time) all the way to Spain might be based on the
Roman practice of transferring auxiliary troops from one end of the empire to
the next for the purpose of detaching them from their native power base. These
details lend a certain sheen of trustworthiness to the story, and we might
speculate whether those are conscious additions made for that particular
purpose, or whether we see here a jumbling of vague and confuse memories of a
past – but not too distant – century. The reason for thinking so is that
although we do not know much about the historicity of Abdon and Sennen, we know
that they are included in the Depositio
Martyrum which was composed in 354 and accordingly some memory seems to
have remained of them (see Farmer’s Oxford
Dictionary of Saints for details of their cult).
Abdon and Sennen Retabula painted by Jaume Huguet, 1459-60 Courtesy of Wikimedia
However, notwithstanding the semblances of
historical truth, we also find that several of the details in the narrative can
be labelled as hagiographical topoi. The Decian persecutions is a typical
historical framework for saints of dubious historicity, and this period is one
of three in which such saint stories are usually set, the other two being the
persecutions under Nero and the persecutions under Diocletian. These are not
the only periods of Roman history to be used as historical backgrounds for
early saints’ lives, but they are the most common. Accordingly, what appears to
be a reasonable date for these two martyrs might merely be a commonplace, a
suggestion strengthened by the strange approximation of their death, because
although it is not meant to be accurate it takes its starting point two years
after Decius’ death.
This leads us to another important point which was presented by my colleagues
Lars Boje Mortensen and Alastair Matthews, namely that the occasional
presentation of minute details might be a way for the writer to give the
impression of an account which comes from eyewitnesses, that the details
provide a certain verisimilitude akin to that provided by the echoes of
historical facts mentioned above. (It is important to note that “the writer” in
this question is not Jacobus de Voragine as he was compiling from older sources.)
Accordingly, the precise number of animals (with their mnemonically powerful
symmetry), the name and rank of the man who buried them, and the approximate
precision of their dating (as pointed out by Boje Mortensen) are all there to
provide the narrative with more intensity and to bridge the gap between the
times of the reader and the times described.
Abdon and Sennen Châteauroux - BM - ms. 0002, f.256v, breviary, Use of Paris, c.1414 Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr
In addition to this verisimilitude we also see a
number of topoi aside from that of its temporal setting. Many details can be
found which reminds one of other stories, and either this is done deliberately
to invoke that kind of association – a typical feature of hagiography which was
intended to lend credence and gravity to the story – or it could be a result of
the writer having this array of topoi readily available in his memory.
The most obvious topos is that of the saint being forced to sacrifice to pagan
idols and then refuse with holy derision. This is found in a wide range of
saint stories, among them St. Catherine and St. Eustace. Another topos is the
intended death by wild beasts – also found in St. Eustace – and the ultimate
death by sword following the failures of the initial tortures (St. Catherine).
Furthermore, that the saints are dragged through the streets can be found for instance
in the story of Saint Fermín, while the detail that their remnants are
honorably buried by other Christians can be seen for instance in St. Polycarp.
That the saints posthumously alerted the faithful of their resting place is a
topos perhaps most famously found in the story of Ambrose’s find of the relics
of SS Gervasius and Protasius in Milano.
One final point should be mentioned here regarding the narrative progression of
the story. The narrative begins in Babylonia and provides the historical
setting and an initial geographical setting. Then the story moves to Cordoba
and the first batch of martyrs – an unnumbered array of Babylonian Christians –
are killed off. This is the preface of the story and in three lines we move
from a grand scene with a big cast of characters which traverses a wide space to
the deeds of two officials in Cordoba. At this point the narrative makes one
more geographical move before it gains complete focus and it is amplified by a
number of minute details. It is interesting, and perhaps also significant, that
the narrative moves to Rome in order to reach its climax. From the inclusion of
Abdon and Sennen in the Depositio
Martyrum this might attest to a Roman memory of their martyrdom, and this
is further suggested in the quiet epilogue which effectively begins with the
abrupt introduction of Quirinius to the stage and the summary of their
re-interment.
Abdon and Sennen Nuremberg chronicles, f.128r, 1493 Courtesy of Wikimedia
As readers of this blog will know, I am a big literature enthusiast. My enthusiasm extends quite widely and I'm not very picky in my choice of reading. I generally tend to shy away from ideas about lesser and greater literature, because although I do think some literary expressions deserve a greater longevity than others, few things are as destructive to reading than to construct artificial divisions which exclude books because of some increasingly ancient canon. For that reason, I think great literature lies in execution rather than in form, and I maintain that some of my greatest literary experiences have been with comic books.
When I was little I grew up with Norwegian translations and editions of Italian stories of Donald Duck. These stories were compiled in pocket books and became a part of the Norwegian literary landscape in 1968. By that time, the Italian home production of Disney stories had been going on for more than ten years, and Italian comic book writers and artists had increasingly found their own voices in this format. Already in the 1950s there were made Donald Duck stories which imitated famous works of literature, such as Orlando Furioso and Doctor Faustus, to mention only a few. In future blogposts I will probably go into greater details, but here I want to highlight a minor case of delightful intertextuality in these stories.
Front page of I Classici della Letteratura, vol. 38
A few years back, the publishing house Corriere della Sera began a collected edition of literary parodies from the Italian Disney production, and the first edition reached 30 volumes in hardback. The second edition counted 40 volumes in paperback, with a slightly different order than in the first edition. In my attempts to learn Italian, I started to buy in a few of these volumes after I came to realise that many of the stories I had grown up with in Norwegian translation were often heavily abbreviated to suit the allotted page number in each pocket book. To read these familiar stories in the original language has been a great pleasure to me, and it has also given me great joy to embark on stories which have not been translated into Norwegian and which were completely new to me.
One of these volumes is the one shown above, a volume collecting three works by William Shakespeare, the first of which is the tragedy of Hamlet, King of Denmark with Donald Duck - or Paperino - in the lead role. The adaptation of the story was done by Giangiacomo Dalmasso and Giovan Battista Carpi, and it ran in three parts in the Italian Mickey Mouse magazine Topolino - Mickey's Italian name - in 1960: volume 226, 227 and 228, issued on January 10, January 25 and February 10 respectively.
The adaptation deviates significantly from the Shakespeare's version and necessarily so, most of all because this is a story for children played out by practically immortal characters, so the violence and the murders of the original are left out. However, several features of the play are retained: Prince Hamlet meets a king's ghost, the crown of the kingdom is usurped, and a Norwegian king - of sorts - makes an entrance.
As often is the case with these adaptations, there is a frame narrative which serves to justify the adaptation itself. As the above opening shows, Donald is taking a bath as the narrative begins and this leads to a sequence where he injures his head, confining the unlucky duck to the bed where he is given a copy of Hamlet.
The Duck household's edition of Hamlet
Reading Shakespeare's tragedy shapes the subsequent dream of the bed-ridden Donald, and in this dream the story unfolds within the framework of the Disney universe. As stated, there are many changes to the story and it reads perhaps more as a cloak-and-dagger castle intrigue than a deep psychological drama. The atmosphere is very dark, as can be seen below where Hamlet enters the treasure chamber of his uncle Scrooge (Paperone in Italian). This page also shows the ingenious playfulness of the writers and artists, as is evidenced by the coat of arms of Scrooge which bears the legend sola in auro exultatio, which can be roughly translated as "only in gold do I rejoice".
This playfulness is made manifest already in the opening page, and this is the very reason why I decided to write this blogpost. As seen above, the story opens with Donald in the bath, singing some lines in Italian. These lines are not just any lines but most likely selected carefully, resulting in a very beautiful intertextuality which gives a friendly nod not only to Shakespeare himself but also to the cultural legacy he inspired.
The lines sung by Donald comes from the opera Otello by Guiseppe Verdi, and these are the last lines of Othello as he smothers Desdemona in a jealous rage, heartbreakingly asking for "un bacio ancora", one more kiss. In other words, right in the opening of an Italian adaptation of Prince Hamlet, the mood is set by the performance of lines from an Italian opera based on another play by Shakespeare, an intertextuality which gave me great pleasure. For readers of this particular volume, moreover, the intertextuality becomes increasingly complex since the adaptation of Hamlet is followed by an adaptation of Othello, written by the very same author behind Amleto, Giangiacomo Dalmasso.
Othello as re-imagined by Giangiacomo Dalmasso & Giorgio Bordini First published in Topolino, vol.851, March 19 1972
Desdemona and Othello the blackamoor
One of very few instances where an Italian Disney character has been portrayed as black
As I was growing up, I never read either of these adaptations so this has been my first encounter with them. Yet the many adaptations I did read made me familiar with a wide range of world literature, even though some of these works remained elusive to me until I reached adulthood. Nonetheless, I treasure these stories more now than ever, because as I learn more about world literature the more I see how beautifully and elegantly these adaptations are wrought.
Un bacio ancora as performed by Enrico Caruso
He has also been parodied in a Paperino comic - as a singing whale performing Figaro
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